


To Call Your Own

by lady_deathangel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_deathangel/pseuds/lady_deathangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most important rule to remember is that all property of the Adler Estate will behave in accordance with the First Amendment of the North American Union and will follow the Governing Body’s Statute of Slavery to the letter of the law. Being a slave doesn't suit Dean but it's nothing he can't handle until someone familiar takes him out of Alistair's cruel hands and into his own. Suddenly Dean finds himself at war with what he wants, struggling to reconcile the man he knew with the one he calls "master" and fighting to remember who he is and what he's ultimately set out to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Call Your Own

**Author's Note:**

> This fic does feature material that may be triggery to some. For more, spoilery, information, please see the end notes.

The Estate’s infirmary had become something of a home away from home. The décor was comparatively lacking but the Adlers were a “spare no expense” kind of governing family. Even their sick room was gilded in gold and the tiny cot was easily the most comfortable thing Dean Winchester had ever had the pleasure of getting stitched up on.

“You look like you had fun,” Nurse Meg said.

Dean blinked at her, still coming down from the night before. More often than not the two of them met under these exact circumstances – Dean bloody and bruised, sometimes to the point Meg had to phone in for a more advanced medi-bot to take care of the injuries she wasn’t qualified to heal. As lucid as Dean wished he could be, something about the white walls and the soft mattress, the adrenaline and pain and humiliation, always dropped him into a stupor. 

Meg had taken advantage a couple of times. Word had it she’d been Alistair’s toy for years before she fell off a wall and all the King’s horses and all the King’s men failed to patch her up. Dean had known she was jealous since the first hour he spent here being carefully stitched back together without so much as a swig of whiskey to numb the pain. 

In the months since then, Meg had figured out that Dean wasn’t as gung-ho about belonging to Alistair as she had been. Not that this knowledge sparked anything resembling empathy, but what could a person expect from someone who missed being the slave to a sadistic, evil son-of-a-bitch?

A shock of pain zipped down Dean’s spine and startled him enough that Meg growled and slapped a tender spot on his thigh to keep him still.

“If you want it in the shape of a lightning bolt, just ask,” she muttered.

The Dean of old would’ve had something witty to say to that. Well, maybe not _witty_ , but scathing at least. Instead, the Dean of now had to watch the words that crossed his mind and his lips, lest his neural training collar give him a little love-tap to remind him of who he belonged to. 

These days Dean was usually too tired to be a mouthy pain in anyone’s ass _anyway_ , but he hadn’t quite reached the point where he was okay with that. If he ever did, God help him, he hoped someone came along to put him out of his misery not long after.

Meg hummed to herself while she worked; every pass of the needle through Dean’s skin was hell on his frayed nerve endings and she smiled like she was well aware of it. Dean closed his eyes and tried to find that macho zen place his dad had shown him back when he was a kid and pain was another part of life in the colonies outside the Estates. Back there, everyone was scraping the bottom of the same barrel to survive and the people up here? They loved to watch it happen.

That was how the Winchesters had gotten the notice of the Adler family in the first place. They’d settled into the KC Colony for a while. It was little more than a dozen square blocks of dilapidated buildings at the foot of the Adler Estate, but the people had been less ruthless and cutthroat than those Dean and his family had grown up running from. The only problem with that was the fact that everyone else knew it, too. They spent more time than not fighting off anyone who had a big gun and a dumb idea to keep their territory.

The Winchesters proved themselves to their new Colony, showing off the kind of combat skills only a former soldier would know. Even Sammy, who’d been too little then to get in the thick of the fighting, had impressed people with his stealth and tech-fu. It would’ve been better if they’d turned out to be useless.

Dean blinked his eyes open at a sound in the hallway and glanced over at the door as it burst open. The figure in the doorway was familiar but Dean couldn’t place the face right away. Part of that may have been due to the fact that he was about five minutes from unconsciousness.

“The prodigal son returns,” Meg said without glancing up.

“What is he doing here?” the stranger asked.

His voice was a deep, jagged rumble, like someone’d dipped it in tar and rolled it down a gravelly road for a few miles. Dean had heard voices like it before – whiskey-and-war rough – but none of them had ever come from a frame as slight or a mouth as pretty as this one.

“Your cousin got bored early,” Meg said. “I guess even a little bloodletting wasn’t enough to keep him interested.”

She looked at Dean as she spoke, eyebrows lifted in a challenge. Dean mustered up the energy to stare right back, trying to convey with his eyes just how unimpressed he was with her attempt to make him feel like he’d done something _wrong_ here. Alistair’d found plenty to do in the short time he’d kept Dean last night; to a guy like that, boredom was just a challenge.

“And who gave Alistair permission to take this man in?” the man demanded.

Meg hummed. “I don’t know if “man” is an applicable adjective here. I’m still not sold on him having a spine, let alone a functioning set of balls.”

“Fuck you,” Dean grumbled, ignoring the zap of pain from his neural collar.

“Say that again,” Meg told him, her eyes glinting with something that made Dean’s stomach roll. “I dare you.”

Dean was tempted to do it but he was supposed to be getting less hostile. It was Alistair’s job to break him, make him into the obedient little toy that the eldest Adler son had put on his Christmas list. In sheer physical terms, Dean was definitely Michael’s type. He’d never get anywhere near the future patriarch if he kept shooting off his mouth, though, and that was kinda the point.

“He’s new,” the stranger said.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Meg said with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

The man stepped into the room. For someone who was shorter and leaner than Dean and looked like he’d slipped on his father’s oversized coat to play dress-up in, the guy had a presence. Dean had met plenty of people and he knew men and women who could command a room with a look. Their ability to demand respect and attention was an intangible one, invaluable inside the Estates _and_ the lowly colonies. 

This guy had that magnetic pull, dragging Dean’s focus away from Meg and her stitches. Dean looked at him, the tousled dark hair and the bright blue eyes, and felt a tug in his stomach like that jolt of sensation that accompanied a long fall. It was easy to blame it on the adrenaline crash, but Dean had never felt anything like it before so he had his doubts.

“All new arrivals are supposed to be approved by myself and Anna,” the man said.

Meg sighed as she finished up the last stitch. “If you’re fishing for details, you’re shit outta luck. You know no one around her tells me anything. All I’m good for is putting band-aids on boo-boos and giving out orgasms to whoever wants them.”

The bitterness in her voice almost made Dean feel bad. Maybe she’d been a fan of Alistair’s particular brand of treatment and there was no mistaking her for _nice_ , but they weren’t all that different. One way or another, they were both a product of their environment and they were here because of the shitty hand life dealt anyone outside of the Estates.

“I’m not . . . fishing,” the stranger said, the words stilted in his mouth like he wasn’t quite sure what they meant. “Are you finished?”

Meg gave Dean a pat on the waist, right over the recently stitched gash that Alistair had carved just below his ribs. The flare of pain made Dean groan, the sound caught behind his teeth but still audible enough to make Meg laugh.

“Sure thing, angelface. Why? You want him?”

There was a pause and then the man nodded. Meg laughed again but this time there was something shocked and almost delighted in the sound.

“Why, Castiel,” she said, pushing to her feet and tugging Dean up with her. “You’re just full of surprises.”

She shoved Dean forward, her hand small but firm against the middle of his back. Somehow his legs understood what they were supposed to do without him telling them. He walked forward until a hand on his shoulder stopped him and he kept his eyes on his feet so he wouldn’t look up and give himself away. 

The face was only vaguely familiar but that name was unforgettable and recognition hit Dean like brass knuckles to the gut. He should’ve known those eyes and that voice, was intimately familiar with the body hidden under that ugly coat, but it had been years and this was the last place Dean could have expected to run into someone he’d first met in a colony bar a hundred miles away from here.

Dean was holding up as well as could be expected under Alistair’s care, but maybe he was more cracked than he’d thought if a part of him actually hoped that Castiel remembered him. It would be a very, very bad thing if he did and Dean almost couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Get him out of here,” Meg said. “I’ve got other shit to do.”

That probably wasn’t true, but Meg waved them off with her robotic arm and it wasn’t like Dean was interested in hanging out. He chanced a glance up at Castiel but the other man just spun on his heel and led them out of the room and down the hall. Dean followed, careful to keep a step behind. 

Castiel didn’t say a word as they walked but he glanced back a few times, his eyes flashing with something that made Dean’s skin prickle with awareness. They turned a few unfamiliar corners, Castiel taking them farther into the Estate’s main building than Dean had been so far. For almost two months Dean had only seen the inside of Alistair’s chambers, his own tiny hole of a room, or the infirmary. The one time Dean had attempted to check out the rest of the place for himself, his neural collar had zapped him unconscious.

It was blessedly quiet right now, nothing but a light weight around the base of Dean’s throat. He stared at the tense lines of Castiel’s back. The collar wouldn’t react, not when Dean was being handled by another member of the Adler family. Dean’s stomach churned and he fought down the urge to vomit all over the glossy marble floors of the hallway. Castiel was one of _them_ and the knowledge made Dean want to punch something.

The collar hummed a warning and Dean quieted any rebellious thoughts.

“In here,” Castiel finally said, opening a door with an ornate handle. 

Dean waited but Castiel nodded for him to enter first. It was a direct violation of everything Alistair had been attempting to literally hammer into Dean, but his reflexes were still those of a free man. He walked forward without thinking and flinched as he crossed the threshold, expecting a reaction from the collar that never came.

Castiel closed and locked the door behind them.

“You’re safe here,” he said.

There was something earnest in his voice but Dean wasn’t an idiot. His life depended on making the right call here and trusting some asshole who’d lied to him the first time they’d met definitely wasn’t it.

“Right,” Dean said, but he imbued the word with enough sarcasm to test the theory.

A half-hour session with Alistair usually resulted in the collar responding to everything from an eyeroll to a backhanded insult. Dean didn’t get the science of the thing and nobody’d bothered to explain it to him. There may have been a monologue from Alistair that first day about brainwaves and breaking people down so they could be built back up the right way, but Dean had been a little preoccupied at the time. He’d never been strung up from a ceiling before. The novelty of the experience had been overwhelming.

The collar was sensitive to pretty much every one of Dean’s thoughts and a lot of his actions. It always responded accordingly. When it didn’t so much as buzz at Dean’s disrespectful tone, he realized Castiel may not have been telling the complete truth, but he wasn’t lying.

Castiel raised an eyebrow and Dean shrugged.

“So I can call you a dick without getting electrocuted,” Dean said. “Should I be grateful?”

“Dean,” Castiel said, quiet and firm.

Dean’s throat clicked when he swallowed and his hands felt clammy. “You do remember me then.”

Castiel nodded and didn’t look surprised when Dean strode forward and punched him right in the fucking face. His head jerked back but he didn’t even lift a hand to his cheek, just turned to look at Dean with something like regret in his eyes.

“Dean,” he said again, but Dean didn’t want to hear it.

“You’re one of _them_ ,” he hissed. “You _asshole_.”

“It’s not like that,” Castiel said.

“So you’re not a member of the illustrious Adler estate? Alistair’s not your cousin?”

Castiel looked away, his jaw clenching with what might’ve been guilt. Dean scoffed and turned around, stalking over to the other side of the room just to put some space between them.

“You can sleep here,” Castiel eventually said.

“Alistair’ll kick my ass if I’m not in my own bed when he wants me,” Dean said. “Not that I expect you to care.”

“Alistair has a habit of breaking my brothers’ toys before they can be fully appreciated. Zachariah will grant a transfer of you to another training master when I speak with him.”

Castiel’s voice was full of a quiet confidence that Dean remembered from their first meeting. That guy would’ve slit his own wrists before offering a slave the use of his bed instead of freedom but it was obvious that this Castiel wasn’t the same Cas that Dean met all those years ago.

“You’re a real piece of work,” Dean said.

He reveled in the ability to imbue the words with all of the disdain he could muster. When Castiel flinched, that was its own little victory. 

“Get some rest,” Castiel said.

The door closed with a quiet click behind him. Dean stared at it for an hour, waited for someone to barge in and drag him off for punishment or another lesson. When no one came, he fell back onto the huge bed that dominated the room. The mattress welcomed him with blissfully soft, open arms but Dean couldn’t waste time with sleep. Instead he stared up at the ceiling and thought about all of the things he’d had to keep under mental lock and key since Alistair had first slipped the collar around his throat.

 

_._

 

“Look after Sammy,” Dad had said.

The first time, Dean had been little more than a toddler. Estate Officials came in the middle of the night on an anonymous tip to arrest Mary Winchester for conspiracy against the Governing Body. They’d burst into the house but Dean’s mom was long gone. So the men with the guns, the same ones who were supposed to protect the colonists and the members of the Estate equally, set fire to Sammy’s nursery.

Dean didn’t know how they got out, though Pastor Jim always called it a miracle. He remembered the smoke and the heat, the tear tracks that felt slick and shameful on his cheeks, and then the comforting, wriggling weight of his little brother in his arms. Dad ushered them out of the house and made Dean promise to take care of Sam.

Growing up, that was his one responsibility. Their lives were constantly changing; they moved from colony to colony for most of Dean’s childhood. They lived with Uncle Bobby and Aunt Karen for a while, but Estate Officials showed up less than a year after, killed Karen and demolished Uncle Bobby’s place of business. Uncle Bobby disappeared, though Dad always insisted he wasn’t dead. Dean could still remember asking why they didn’t disappear, too, like Bobby and Mom. 

It was probably always an option, but Dad kept them above-ground for years. They’d stay with Pastor Jim for a few weeks, with Ellen and Bill and Jo, with every single friend Dad or Uncle Bobby or Mom had ever made. Through it all, Dean looked after Sammy. Dad did whatever work it was he’d fallen into, things that would always bring Estate Officials sniffing around eventually. Dean learned to avoid asking questions or being a burden and he raised his little brother the best way he knew how.

If there was one thing in life that Dean was honestly good at, it was looking after Sam. Even when they found themselves joining the underground movement, following rumors about Uncle Bobby’s whereabouts and whispers about Mom from colony to colony, Dean never was good for much but shooting shit and keeping his brother alive.

That was Dean’s job, his _only_ job, but he fucked it up in the end. Of course he did. Word on the many winding streets of the North American Union claimed that a Winchester wasn’t good for much except botching a job and screwing another man over. Dean couldn’t say that was an exaggeration. Not with a straight face, anyway.

Sometimes when Alistair had him strapped to this table or that wall, Dean wondered if he could atone for his mistakes in blood. On those days he welcomed the bite of Alistair’s blade, the crack of his whip, the endless stream of degradation that fell from those thin, cracked lips. It was no less than he deserved and there wasn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t agree on that point.

It was important, though, for Dean to remember that he still had a purpose. If he was ever going to make things right, he had to get off of Alistair’s rack. That was the thought that he clung to, the one that kept him going.

“Up and at ‘em, kid.”

The voice jerked Dean out of sleep so quickly he lost the thread of the dream he’d been having, but a strong sense of pain and loss lingered, tacky like glue. He sat up and did a visual sweep of the room, a holdover from years of training. The speaker stood next to the bed with an amused smile curling her mouth.

“You’re a jumpy one,” she said. “That’s good. You’ve still got some life in you.”

The figure by the bed was a woman. The only thing average about her was her height. Outside of that she was attractive in a way that was too gritty for the way she was put together. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose knot and she wore a dress in a shade of ebony so rich it seemed to soak up the light in the room.

If it weren’t for the delicate-looking collar looped around the base of her neck and the fact that the dress was low-cut and sheer, revealing swathes of pale skin every time she moved, she might’ve been another Adler or a friend of a friend.

“Guess the training’s not working,” Dean said before he could think about it.

She snorted. “Good.”

It felt odd to be talking to a slave who clearly had some sort of self-identity. Dean hadn’t come into contact with many and every single one was the perfect example of what an Adler slave should behave like. The obvious exception was Meg, but most of her attitude was directed at Dean because he still hadn’t rolled over and bared his belly to her favorite sadist. She could get away with being opinionated because it was clear where her loyalties lay.

This woman was different. For more than one reason, Dean realized. She had a pair of dark sunglasses perched on her nose, an odd accessory considering. It became clear they weren’t for aesthetics, though, when the sound of Dean’s voice had her adjusting the tilt of her head. If he had to guess, she hadn’t been able to pinpoint his exact location until just then.

“Figured it out, did you?” she asked into Dean’s silence, sliding the glasses off and winking at him.

Her eyes were a cloudy blue, no iris, no pupil, just glass. It was such a strange choice given the resources the Adlers had at their disposal. One of the lines the collection agent had fed Dad had been that Dean would receive the finest in care from the Adlers, that it would be an upgrade from the life he lived in the colony.

At the time they’d both thought it was bullshit – not that the Adlers had access to that kind of medical care, but that they would use it to enhance the living conditions of their slaves. So far it looked like maybe that hadn’t just been a pretty selling point. Between Meg’s arm – a full, robotic replacement – and a few of Dean’s own emergency surgeries, the Adlers didn’t seem the type to half-ass it when taking care of their slaves.

“My girl likes ‘em,” the woman said, tapping the corner of one eye.

“Your girl?”

“Anna,” the woman answered. “You haven’t met.”

“Neither have we,” Dean said.

That got him another smile. “Pamela. And _you_ must be the lucky duck who gets to spend the night with Castiel.”

Dean blinked and said, “It’s just Dean, actually.”

Pamela laughed and reached out to clap him on the shoulder. It was the first time anyone other than Alistair or Meg had laid a hand on him since he’d gotten here; Dean was surprised when he responded by flinching away from it.

“Sorry,” Pamela said, pulling her hand back and holding it up to show she meant no harm. “Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

Dean didn’t want to leave this room but he knew he didn’t have a choice. Freedom wasn’t really a concept that applied to him anymore. If someone told him he had to be somewhere, he went. He wasn’t allowed to ask questions. 

Pamela led the way. She moved confidently – no help from a cane, no cautious steps, not even a hand on the wall to guide her – and it occurred to Dean that she either had the path memorized or was getting some help from an invisible implant. It would explain why she had the glass eyes instead of a set of replacements; maybe it was less about the Adlers denying her the medical care and more about some kinky fake-eye fetish of her master’s. 

Those thoughts were enough to keep Dean in a neutral state of mind as they made their way down the hall. Being able to think about whatever he wanted the night before had been an unexpected break, but he needed to remember his place if he didn’t want to end up right back at lesson one. Losing all the progress he’d made would be a waste of time. That and he didn’t like the idea of being punished for it.

They didn’t walk very far and Dean made sure to pay attention to how many turns they made and which direction they were going. He’d done the same last night as Castiel had led him to the safe room. It was mostly out of habit, but Dean couldn’t help hoping the information would be useful someday. They turned one last corner down yet another hall Dean didn’t recognize and stopped in front of a set of double-doors.

Pamela lifted a hand and knocked once before turning to Dean with another grin. How anyone could be so good-humored in a situation like theirs, Dean didn’t know. Then again, the way Pamela had said her master’s name had been full of warmth and affection. Maybe that had something to do with it.

“Have fun,” Pamela said.

Dean had a feeling she was winking again, but he couldn’t tell behind the dark lenses of her glasses. She gave him one last smile and turned on her heel as the door swung open. 

Castiel stood on the other side. He’d ditched the coat somewhere, but he still didn’t look anything like the guy who’d approached Dean over Ash’s contraband homebrew. That man had been dressed in jeans and a threadbare t-shirt just like any other poor colony-bound bastard. This man wore a white button-down shirt that probably cost more than Dean’s family had ever made in a month tucked into a pair of dark, fitted slacks that hugged his hips. 

The fact that the sight of him, with his shirt open at the collar and his feet bare beneath the slightly too-long hems of his pants, made Dean’s heart thud painfully in his chest was embarrassing. Dean ducked his head and waited to be invited in, calling on all of the lessons he’d learned since coming here. There was a soft sound from Castiel, dismayed and frustrated.

“You can come in,” he said.

There wasn’t enough room for Dean to cross the threshold without brushing Castiel on the way. That brief moment of contact made his breath catch and he had to wonder if Alistair had secretly reprogrammed him into a touch-needy animal when he wasn’t paying attention.

“Zachariah granted the transfer,” Castiel said.

Dean nodded. He’d figured that much out on his own but he wasn’t gonna say anything smart about it. He knew the collar would respond, could feel it waiting for Dean to make one wrong verbal or mental step.

“And now?” Dean asked, doing his level best to keep his voice deferent.

There was a pause and then Castiel said, “Now you’re mine.”

The swell of red-hot emotion that swelled up at those words was unexpected, dizzying in its intensity.

Dean had watched his father sign the papers relinquishing his son’s basic human rights. He’d been poked and prodded by a team of physicians and scientists before he was found suitable for the Adler heir; his parting gift had been the collar they’d fitted around his neck and hooked up to his brain. After all of that he’d been turned over to Alistair who had said and done much worse than to inform him of the very obvious fact that he wasn’t a free man anymore. 

It had been difficult for Dean to mind his tongue and his manners, to keep his head down and his eyes lowered, to follow all of the bullshit rules that kept slaves in their place around here. There were days his fingers twitched against thin air, desperate for the heft of his gun and its responsive trigger. And yet none of that had filled Dean with the kind of rage that Castiel’s matter-of-fact claim on him just had.

The feeling bubbled in Dean’s gut like boiling water, roiling and tossing until it slid up his throat and over his tongue in words he couldn’t bite back.

“You think just because you fucked me once you can waltz in here and _take_ me?”

Obviously he could – anyone had that ability if they were granted permission by the head of the family – and it was something Alistair had put painstaking effort into making sure Dean didn’t forget. The fact that Dean still thought like a free man wasn’t a secret, but he usually wasn’t so stupid as to let it slip like that. 

It was worse, still, because the neural collar lit up like a fucking firework, sending pulse after electric pulse skittering across every single nerve-ending in Dean’s body. The sensation dazed him, whiting out his vision at the edges and sending him to his knees.

A mistake like that usually took five or ten minutes to recover from on its own and Alistair always liked to reinforce the lesson with a more hands-on punishment. Dean sucked in a shallow breath and tensed himself for a blow to follow up the collar’s love-tap. Instead, fingertips brushed the damp skin at his temples. The touch was gentle but unexpected and Dean ducked away from it, fighting the urge to curl up and make himself as small as possible.

“You can’t speak to me like that,” Castiel said.

The guy really had a knack for stating the obvious and the inanity of the statement startled a laugh out of Dean.

“Yeah, you’d think that lesson would’ve stuck already,” he said, grateful that his voice was too breathless and his brain too sluggish from the shock to trigger another response from the collar.

There was a pause while Dean caught his breath and his body stopped shaking. Castiel stayed where he was, hovering in a way Alistair never did. Dean was almost surprised to look up and see that Castiel wasn’t wringing his hands in distress.

“I thought you’d appreciate being released from Alistair’s . . . care,” he said.

There was a thread of distaste woven through the words, like Castiel had opinions on Alistair’s methods of training slaves and none of them were positive.

“I am,” Dean forced himself to say.

It was what Castiel wanted to hear, what a good slave would tell his new master. It wasn’t even untrue; Dean was happy as a goddamn clam to be spending the night outside of Alistair’s chamber of horrors. He was still trading one master for another and there was nothing comforting about being _owned_.

“You’d rather be with someone else?” Castiel asked.

 _Yeah, with my family and friends,_ Dean thought. 

The collar buzzed a warning and Dean shuddered, the light stimulation too much for his frayed nerves.

There was another pause. Dean could feel Castiel’s eyes on him, the gaze heavy and assessing. It was the first time in months anyone had looked at him like they were seeing something more than flesh, blood, and bone to be used however they saw fit. There was no way to tell if Castiel saw an equal when he looked at Dean, the not-quite-a-kid-not-quite-a-man who’d first crossed his path, not without breaking the rules and meeting the other man’s stare.

In the end, it didn’t matter but there was something about being looked at and _seen_ that warmed Dean up with a feeling suspiciously like comfort.

“Are you aware of the rules of the Adler Estate?” Castiel finally asked.

His voice was clipped and authoritative, a far cry from the soft and perplexed tones from earlier. This was Castiel the training master and while all evidence indicated he was kinder than Alistair, Dean still didn’t know what to expect.

“Yes,” Dean answered, straightening his spine and sitting back more comfortably on his knees.

“First rule.” It wasn’t a question.

“All property of the Adler Estate will behave in accordance with the First Amendment of the North American Union and will follow the Governing Body’s Statute of Slavery to the letter of the law.”

“Good.”

Castiel shifted his weight, distributing it more evenly between both legs. Dean watched the movement roll through the soles of the man’s feet, up through his knees, and out of Dean’s peripheral vision. In his mind’s eye, he imagined Castiel standing straight and tall, now. It was like he was putting on the skin of someone else – first voice, then posture, and Dean didn’t know what came next.

“So you can recite a few words from memory,” Castiel said. “But do you understand what it means?”

Dean wanted to retort that he wasn’t an idiot but just the barest thought was enough to get the neural collar to tag him with a bite of pain. An idiot would let the words fly knowing what would come after. Dean bit his tongue.

“It means,” he said, “that all of my basic human rights were sold to the Adler Estate.”

“We own you,” Castiel said.

His voice was low and sure but Dean knew he was expecting a response. It tore at his throat, one tiny little word, but there was no denying it.

“Yes,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time Dean had admitted aloud that he belonged to someone else. There’d been a night, one of the first ones, when Alistair had made Dean do little more than repeat some variation on the words over and over. It was supposed to help the idea sink in. It must’ve worked on Alistair’s other slaves, but Dean was more stubborn than that.

Shame trickled down Dean’s spine every time, cold and slimy. Usually it was followed up by one of Alistair’s sick, twisted smiles and some particularly cruel torture, just to reinforce the idea. Maybe Dean hadn’t broken yet, and he hoped to a God he didn’t even believe in that he never did, but he’d learned to expect the pain. With Alistair, that was all there was. Punishments, rewards, and casual lessons all came at the end of a cane or on the edge of a blade. They fell from the tails of a whip, danced on the tip of a flame. 

When Castiel moved, Dean expected more of the same. He managed to keep from shying away from the hand that rested against the back of his neck but he tensed beneath the other man’s warm, broad palm. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Castiel said, hushed like he was sharing a secret. “Those are Alistair’s methods, not mine.”

Fingers massaged the base of Dean’s skull in the firmest, sweetest touch he’d felt in longer than he could remember. His head tipped even further forward without any conscious thought and it occurred to him too late just how vulnerable he was here.

“I’m not going to fuck you, either,” Castiel continued. 

It was a simple and easy statement, but the words still jolted down Dean’s spine in a way he wasn’t comfortable with. In all the time Dean had spent with Alistair, he’d been lucky enough to avoid any unwanted sexual contact. The implication was always there that if Alistair wanted, he would take. Dean’s body belonged to whoever had permission to use it within the Adler Estate, after all, and there was no such thing as non-consensual.

For whatever reason, though, Alistair had left him alone. Sometimes Dean had to wonder if it was because the guy didn’t get off on sex so much as he got off on making people bleed. Other times he figured Alistair was just biding his time, waiting until Dean was a little bit more broken in before he took it to the next level. Meg had assured him it would happen, though she always seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from Dean telling her she wouldn’t have to look him over for more intimate wounds.

“Why?”

The question slipped out but Dean was either too relaxed or too genuinely curious for the collar to sense a threat and if Castiel minded, it was impossible to tell.

“Are you disappointed?” he asked.

There was something to his voice that dared Dean to challenge him but it was more of a tease than the deliberately cruel baiting Dean was used to. He lifted his eyes in response and found Castiel staring down at him, his expression caught somewhere between implacable and fond.

“No,” Dean said.

Castiel’s lips curved up at the corners and he tugged lightly on Dean’s hair. “Liar,” he said.

Dean wanted to deny it but he didn’t have the right. There was also a traitorous part of him that perked up and pointed out that if he was going to have demeaning sex while in captivity, wouldn’t he rather it be Castiel than anyone else? 

Clearly he’d been without his freedom for too long.

“We’ll start off simply,” Castiel said. “I need to know what Alistair’s managed to teach you.”

Alistair’s lessons had revolved around breaking Dean’s spirit to the point that he no longer felt like himself, but somewhere in there he’d picked up on a few other essential tools of the trade. Like the eye thing and keeping at least one step behind one’s master at all times. He’d learned to speak softly and he knew that he wasn’t allowed to make demands or requests. Asking questions wasn’t generally permitted, though that didn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule for Castiel. It was all straightforward enough that Dean probably could’ve picked it up on his own. He was just obstinate enough that none of it was doing a good job of sticking.

Castiel withdrew his hand from Dean’s hair and took a step back.

“We’re going for a walk. I’d like to see how you behave beyond closed doors.”

Dean rose to his feet in a motion that had become fluid with practice. Alistair’d made him practice it one night until his knees were bruised and bleeding. Castiel hummed in what might have been approval – though if that was the case then the guy was probably pretty easy to please – and then led the way to the door. Dean lifted his head so he’d be able to follow Castiel without bumping into anything, but tried to keep it at an angle that was still submissive.

All the fucking rules a slave had to follow just to make a bunch of glorified pet owners happy. The thought generated a shock from the collar but Dean hid his grimace and waited for Castiel to take two steps before following.

_._

Colony life had never been easy. For most people it was just the shit-end of the stick that accompanied being born into the wrong family or the wrong profession or whatever other criteria the Governing Body had in mind to keep the Estates nice and nuclear. For the Winchesters, it’d been worse than usual.

For years Dean didn’t understand why. He had his suspicions, sure, but it took years for him to learn the truth. In all that time – all the running and the hiding and the living day-to-day – he never once wished he could be on the other side of things.

There was something about the Estates that had always made colony folk uncomfortable, even without all the slimy politics and the monopolies on wealth. Being on the inside, now, Dean could understand it. Everything was a little _too_ clean and tidy. There was never any mess because if something was spilled or broken, there was a bot zipping around the corner to clean it right up. 

The people dressed impeccably and smelled like they bathed once or twice a day. Not everyone was educated, but they liked to pretend that they were and they were good at it. There was this unnatural glitz and shine to everything, right down to the knobs on the doors and the tips of everyone’s shoes. 

Dean was used to grit under his fingernails and the musky smell of humans who could afford to bathe once a week at most. Where he came from, doors creaked on their hinges and a building was lucky to have windows that were boarded up. People wore whatever clothes they could salvage from old warehouses or barter for on the streets. The only thing that had any shine to it was the sweat that formed on a person’s brow while working his or her ass off just to put a little food on the table.

After a long night with Castiel spent showing just how demure he could be, Dean had been rewarded with his first real glimpse of life on the Estate outside of Alistair’s rooms and Nurse Meg’s office. It was easy to see, as Castiel led him out to a large courtyard, why people like Dean knew to hate places like this before they were old enough to understand the concept of injustice.

“Have you been out here before?” Castiel asked over his shoulder.

He had to know the answer, but he had this thing about engaging Dean in slave-appropriate conversation. Last night he’d explained that Michael – the Adler son Dean was destined for – would expect a slave who was able to communicate.

“He won’t want you to have any opinions,” Castiel had said. “But then, he doesn’t like _anyone_ to have them, regardless of who they are.”

That was the first time Dean saw the Cas he’d known before. Not that they’d spent more than a very long, very loud, very active handful of hours together, but before they’d stumbled into Dean’s small apartment they’d had a conversation. Both of them had been tightlipped about what they were doing so far west and details about their pasts had been off-limits. Cas had complained about his family, though, mentioning a group of people who were obscenely sympathetic to the Governing Body. He’d sounded like any other colony brat who didn’t understand how anyone could sit idly by and claim to be okay with the lives they’d been forced into.

Dean had no idea how Castiel had been able to stomach telling all those lies that night and he couldn’t fathom _why_. Maybe it was going to become some new fad – Estate-bred children slumming it in the colonies every other weekend just for the hell of it. Still, maybe there was some truth to the frustration Cas had voiced about his family.

It didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but for some reason Dean wanted to believe that not everything had been a lie.

Castiel cleared his throat and Dean remembered he was supposed to answer.

“No,” he said.

“Usually only slaves who have finished their training are allowed out here,” Castiel said. 

_And those who’ve been rewarded for good behavior,_ Dean thought. 

It was easy to see why; the courtyard spanned an impressive length and was boxed in by the longest halls of each wing of the main house. Lush, green grass was dotted with paths cobbled from smooth, flat stones that gleamed under the sun. Willow trees grew tall and wide, their hanging branches offering the barest glimpse at serene hideaways thick with vibrant flowers. 

A mossy outcropping of rocks spilled water into a wide pond at the center of the courtyard and filled the air with the gentle sound of falling water. Dean didn’t recognize the flowers or plants that grew along its glossy banks and he didn’t have a word for the huge fish that swam just beneath the surface. He was transfixed by their scales, though – the white-and-gold-and-red of them – along with the elegant fan of their fins.

Dean had felt far removed from the colonies since he’d arrived here, but four walls were still four walls. Here they were sturdy and clean and beautiful, but Dean had lived in houses before. He’d never seen anything like this in his life.

This was the real difference between the Estates and the colonies right here. Someone had taken the time to build this, to provide already wealthy people with something natural and beautiful and richer than all of their money could account for. A place like this gave the illusion of freedom and could chase away memories of a world miles away where the air was thick with the smell of filth and the only parks were sandlots that swallowed up any life that attempted to take root.

Adler slaves probably flocked to this place if they were allowed just to get lost for an hour or two. 

“You like it,” Castiel said, no question to it.

Dean nodded. “It’s awesome.”

Castiel snorted and Dean realized that had probably made him sound every inch the colony brat he was. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, ducking his head.

“I’ll let it slide,” Castiel said.

When Dean glanced up, Castiel was smiling at him in a way that sparked another memory. It was stupid how much Dean wanted to cling to a falsified image of the man and he glanced away to try and shake those thoughts out of his head.

The courtyard had been relatively empty so far with just a few members of the Adler family and their slaves coming or going. They hadn’t paid much attention to Dean and Castiel so Dean had returned the favor. Castiel had helped by steering clear of them, almost like he wanted to interact with them about as much as Dean did. So it wasn’t the sight of a pair walking on the other side of the pond that caused Dean to stop in his tracks.

“Dean,” Castiel said.

Dean registered the fact that he needed to answer, but even the electric reminder from his collar couldn’t get him to tear his eyes away from the boy a tiny body of water away.

His hair was long and thick and _clean_ , hanging around his ears and curling against the back of his neck. His eyes were downcast and he was tall and thin, like he’d grown several inches over a short time. The tunic he wore over a pair of almost non-existent shorts was a lurid shade of red that caught the light and dazzled Dean’s eyes. 

There was nothing about the boy that was immediately recognizable, but Dean would know his brother anywhere.

“Sammy,” he gasped at the same time Castiel said his name again, louder and more insistent.

The boy’s head lifted and Dean found himself caught in a familiar, hazel-eyed gaze like a fish on a hook. Sam’s eyes widened and his lips parted though he didn’t dare say a word.

“Seen something interesting, have you?” his companion said.

There was something about his voice – the tone of it amused and indulgent and the same kind of cold that bit off fingers and toes, the kind that killed. Dean shuddered and looked away as quickly as he could.

“I have to talk to him,” Dean said under his breath, eyes fixed to Castiel’s shoes. “The slave, I have to-”

“Be _quiet_ ,” Castiel hissed.

He reached out to grip Dean high up on his arm and started to pull him away. That same cold voice called Castiel’s name but they didn’t stop. Dean wanted to yank himself free and run back, grab Sammy, get them the hell out of there. Castiel was strong for such a small guy, though, and Dean could already tell there would be a bruise in the shape of the man’s hand around his bicep later. 

“You _answer_ when I speak to you,” Castiel said. “You only talk when I’ve given you permission to do so.”

The chastisement was loud, the sound of Castiel’s gravel-thick voice bouncing off the corridors. Dean swallowed hard around the knot of anger and shame and helplessness burning a hole in his throat so he could answer.

“Yes, sir.”

Castiel made a sound like a growl as they turned a corner and then he slammed Dean up against the wall. They were in a shadowy enclave hidden from anyone’s view, but it wasn’t private. Dean squirmed at the thought that anyone could walk by and watch while Castiel did . . . whatever he was about to do.

“You’re an idiot,” Castiel said, shoving Dean’s shoulders hard and pinning him against the wall at his back. “You can’t follow simple orders and I’m supposed to punish you. Lucifer will want me to _hurt_ you.”

Dean blinked. “Lucifer? Is that-”

“Shut your fool mouth right now or I swear to God I’ll do it for you.”

The words were hushed and urgent, Castiel’s voice tight with anger. Silence fell between them, so thick Dean thought they could probably both hear his heart pounding in his chest. Castiel sucked in a deep breath and then took a step back. 

He and Dean watched each other for a long moment before Dean’s collar buzzed dangerously and sent his eyes to the floor. 

“Follow me,” Castiel said.

They didn’t walk back the way they’d come earlier and Dean realized they weren’t going to the safe room. Instead they walked down another unfamiliar hall where Castiel opened a small, unassuming door and ushered Dean into an equally tiny room. It was dark without windows or lamps, just a thin cot up against one wall.

“You’ll stay here until I’ve figured out what to do with you,” Castiel said.

And then the door swung shut, plunging Dean into darkness.

_._

 

It was impossible to keep track of time in the pitch-black of the room. Dean was left alone with his thoughts and he struggled to keep a leash on all of them. He didn’t think anyone could actually tap into his brain; the rumors existed out in the colonies but so far no one had any conclusive proof. The collar would catalogue the activity up there, though. Dean couldn’t pretend to understand how that worked, but the few times he’d thought of home or Sammy for too long he’d gotten a sharp cease-and-desist in the form of a bolt of painful sensation.

If those topics were off-limits, Dean was sure Castiel probably was, too. Oh, Dean could think all the wonderful, slave-appropriate thoughts he wanted. So far, the nicest thing Dean could say was that he was confused by the other man. Everything else fell into a much more negative category. Much as Dean wanted to be free to call Castiel an asshole in the confines of his own mind, he definitely wasn’t allowed.

Minutes trickled by with impossible slowness. Dean couldn’t occupy himself in the dark so he laid out on the cot and tried to sleep. He drifted in and out of a mindless stupor until someone opened the door long enough to leave him a tray of fruit, bread, and a tiny candle that would probably last thirty minutes if he was lucky.

Dean ate and then he laid back down and watched the play of shadows across the wall until he fell asleep. The process repeated itself three times. Dean didn’t waste any more light after that first time. There was just enough space for him to pace and he stretched his legs as long as the second candle would allow. The third illuminated the room long enough for him to do a short workout that didn’t do much to exhaust him. The fourth kept him company as he sang a few of the old songs his father had taught to him when he was still a kid.

By the time the door open and stayed that way, Dean was beginning to think he had a good idea of what going insane felt like. 

“Come on, then,” Pamela’s voice said.

The lights from the hall were too bright and Dean had to squint to make out her face. Her lips were soft with sympathy and she didn’t meet Dean’s eyes as he crossed the threshold. The hall was empty, the corridors quiet. It was the same haunting lack of noise that had punctuated Dean’s trips to Alistair’s chambers.

Meg had explained, once, that the Adlers liked to train their slaves at night. There were a few practical reasons for it, namely minimizing the chances of someone being forced to interact with a slave that didn’t quite know the rules yet. The other reasons, as far as Dean could tell, were that most of the Adler slaves were expected to spend the rest of their miserable lives coaxing orgasms out of people too rich and lazy to take the time to find a consenting partner.

As often as Meg was summoned to someone’s rooms, Dean would think everyone was pretty well taken care of. On the other hand, he could remember what the collection officer had said – “He’s a beautiful boy, Mr. Winchester. I know women on the Estate who’d go under the knife for lips like his and men who’d pay top dollar to spend fifteen minutes between them.” – so he’d always known those would be his duties.

Training the slaves to live on little sleep and forcing their bodies to recognize the night as waking hours was the Estate’s way of programming them to be comfortable in their new role.

Pamela led the way to Castiel’s chambers and paused at the double-doors before nudging them open and nodding at Dean to follow her inside. The lighting was low and warm, intimate. Dean glanced around, eyes darting from the wide four-poster bed and the translucent fold of fabric at the foot of it, to the huge windows overlooking the eastern side of the Estate. 

Dean had found the room curious the first time he’d gotten a good look. Alistair’s training room was cold and clinical and decorated with whips, chains, and instruments that Dean would probably see in his nightmares for years to come. It seemed Castiel preferred to do his training in a more private bedroom and while everything about it was as luxurious as the rest of the Estate, it lacked any personal touches. Despite the rich mahogany furniture, the plush rugs, and touches of gold and brown and burgundy, there was something cool and empty about the space.

At the moment it was literally empty except for Pamela and Dean. He looked back toward Pamela, mouth open to ask, but she just pointed toward an open door at the back of the room.

“Castiel had me draw you a bath,” she said. “There are clothes for you on the bed. When you’re done, he’ll be waiting.”

Dean blinked at her, his brain struggling to catch up to this turn of events. When she met his eyes and said, “I suggest you be . . . thorough when you bathe,” it made sudden, sickening sense.

For a split second Dean honestly considered running for it. He wouldn’t get far, though. The collar gave him a bone-rattling nudge at just the passing thought. It would knock him out completely if he tried to escape. 

Pamela left without looking back and the doors slid closed behind her. Dean stared at them for a moment before he straightened his spine and made his way into the bathroom.

It was bigger than some of the apartments Dean had called home over his life, everything shiny and pristine. The floors were marble and chilled under Dean’s feet, but the air was fragrant, muggy and warm. A sunken bath dominated the center of the room like the pond in the courtyard, the water foggy with whatever oils and soaps Pamela had added to it.

In the water, the collar around his neck was harmless metal and if Dean ever had a chance to get away, this was it. Not that he’d be able to do much except drown himself. Some part of him, exhausted after the solitary confinement and months of Alistair’s treatment, thought that wasn’t such a bad way to go. Not comparatively. But Sam’s face rose to the forefront of Dean’s mind and he knew he couldn’t do it. He was here for a reason; neither of them were going to suffer for nothing.

It was tempting to luxuriate in the bath; the heat of the water eased some of the tension in Dean’s body and whatever Pamela had added to it made Dean’s skin tingle as he scrubbed, his skin more sensitive than he could remember it being in a long time. Baths like this were such a rare commodity in the colonies that people would save up for the better part of a year just to experience something half this nice. Dean’d never had the pleasure himself.

He didn’t want to drag this out, though, and after a few minutes of bliss he shook himself out of it. The cloths he had to scrub with were soft and left him feeling cleaner than he ever had. Even the scrub-down he’d been given upon arriving here hadn’t been like this. Toward the end, with everything washed, Dean wondered if Pamela’s suggestion for attention to detail meant he was supposed to . . . prepare himself for his training master.

It wasn’t anything Dean hadn’t done before, though he preferred being on the other end of it. In the colonies a willing body was a willing body and Dean hadn’t made it a habit of being picky. There were those rare individuals who carried archaic ideas about human sexuality but they weren’t common. Most people didn’t care where anyone else stuck his dick so long as he wasn’t about to sell them or their loved ones to the highest bidder.

The thing about it, though, was that Dean hadn’t been in a situation like this since he was a teenager. There’d been a few years, there, when Dad had been drunk more often than not and he’d gone and burned a lot of their bridges. It was just the three of them moving from colony to colony and someone needed to put food on the table. Whoring was as good a way to do it as any and Dean was prettier than most boys who’d suck someone’s cock for a meal or an extension on rent. It hadn’t been fun and he’d hated himself some days, but people did what they had to.

This was just like that. Except, Dean thought as he searched through the bottles lined around the tub, it wasn’t quite like that at all. Because Dean had never given two shits about the guys he’d fucked for money. He couldn’t say he cared about Castiel but he’d already slept with him once just because they’d both wanted it. It would’ve been easier if the attraction had died right along with whatever persona Castiel’d put on in that colony, but it hadn’t.

Hell, if it had to be anyone . . . 

Dean didn’t finish that thought and gave up looking for lube. There was nothing there which either meant that was something Castiel wanted to do himself or he didn’t want it at all. There was no way of knowing and Dean had given up trying to figure anything out.

There was a fluffy towel on the edge of the tub, nearly as long as Dean was tall. Dean climbed out and dried off, rubbing the lush fabric over his arms and legs a few more times than necessary. He ruffled his hair dry and considered wrapping the towel around his waist to walk out into the room. Modesty wasn’t something Dean was burdened with in general, but he didn’t like being vulnerable, either.

He heard the door click outside and lifted a hand to the ring of metal around his neck. There probably wasn’t much point in pretending he wasn’t completely at the mercy of the man in the other room, not now, and Dean was too tired to pick that fight. He let the towel slip from his fingers and stepped over the pool of fabric on the floor as he walked into the bedroom.

Castiel stood next to the window, eyes fixed on the horizon. Dean watched him for a moment, his stomach twisting with a painful combination of apprehension, fear, and adrenaline. When the other man didn’t look up, Dean continued to the bed and grabbed the clothes that had been provided for him.

Like his usual outfit, there was no shirt to it. The pants were finer than those he wore every day, though, the feel of them soft and weightless in Dean’s hands. They were loose when he slipped them on, the waistband sitting low on his hips and the hems just a bit too big around his bare feet. They were a dark, hunter green that looked almost black in the low light and they were completely sheer. If Dean moved a certain way, he could probably disguise himself in shadow but that wasn’t the purpose of the clothes.

He was meant to be seen.

“Lucifer spoke to me,” Castiel said without turning.

Dean looked up and realized the other man had been watching Dean’s reflection in the glass the whole time. The other man’s expression was smooth as stone and just as blank and implacable. There were no clues anywhere about what he was thinking, not in his voice or his casual posture. 

“Sir?” Dean prompted, hoping that Castiel would at least give him _something_.

“He likes the look of you,” Castiel went on. “He wasn’t impressed by your outburst in the courtyard, though.”

Castiel finally turned and took a step forward. It was pure month-long habit that pulled Dean’s eyes to the floor and he fought the urge to wince and wait for a harsh touch or command.

“He expressed his concerns to Michael.”

Dean watched as Castiel’s feet edged into his line of sight. They weren’t bare this time, but encased in a pair of sensible and probably expensive shoes. The tips of them gleamed under the dim light and Dean found himself wanting to scuff them up just the tiniest bit, just so he wouldn’t be so firmly reminded of where he’d come from and who he was.

“My brothers are of the opinion that if beating you into submission didn’t work, perhaps fucking it into you will.”

A shudder ran through Dean’s body and he fought the urge to stare at Castiel in shock. None of this was unexpected but he couldn’t help the way everything inside him wanted to rebel now that the cold truth of the situation had been laid out.

“Michael expects a talented and submissive bedslave,” Castiel said. “He requested that be the focus of your training from now on.”

There was a “no” on the tip of Dean’s tongue but he swallowed it back down. There was nowhere for him to run and he’d known this would happen eventually. There was nothing he could do except lie back and wait for it to be over.

“Where do you want me?” Dean asked, already inching toward the bed.

A hand in his hair stopped him short. The touch was like the one from their first night together as a slave and his training master; Castiel awarded his slaves with affection and positive attention and Dean had quickly understood why Pamela called him “lucky”. More than once, Castiel’s hand had found its way to Dean’s head in a caress or a leisurely stroke.

Dean wasn’t much for being petted, but after so long with no hands but Meg’s and Alistair’s coming anywhere near him he’d practically melted under the touches.

Just because this was similar to that didn’t mean it was identical. Castiel’s fingers brushed along the curve of Dean’s ear and followed it to the length of neck that wasn’t encased in metal. A shiver built up beneath Dean’s skin and he felt a tingle in his scalp.

“Dean,” Castiel said quietly, one finger tapping his chin to get him to lift his gaze.

When their eyes met, Dean felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Castiel’s face was as inscrutable as ever but that was just an act. His eyes told Dean the truth – there was heat there that said he still wanted Dean, but regret that spoke of how much he didn’t want it to happen like this. It didn’t do anything to comfort Dean or calm his nerves, but it was a relief to know he might not be alone in this.

“Undress me,” Castiel ordered.

Dean swallowed hard and forced his numb arms to move. Castiel was in a full suit, slightly too-big on his lean frame. The last time they’d done this, Cas had worn nothing but a worn jacket and a weather-beaten t-shirt over jeans that were kept up by sheer will and a heavy belt. They hadn’t bothered taking the time to strip each other then. There was no electricity in Dean’s apartment to see by for one thing. More importantly, they’d been too busy kissing to stay apart for that long.

Honestly, Dean wasn’t sure when he’d last taken his time undressing anyone. Most of his partners had wanted to skip right to the sex and foreplay had been limited to what they could do in the fifteen minutes they had before losing patience. 

It was weird, then, to be doing this _now_. There was something intimate about the way Dean’s hands looked pushing Castiel’s jacket off of his shoulders and it didn’t belong in a suggestively lit bedroom between a slave and a master. He slipped the buttons on Castiel’s vest free and tugged that off, letting it join the jacket on the floor. 

Dean had to step in closer to undo Castiel’s tie and he could feel the heat of the other man’s body warming the front of his own. The smell of clean skin beneath a layer of unfamiliar, spicy soap reached Dean’s nose. It was the opposite of Alistair’s usual stench – stale sweat and the iron tang of blood. It was something of a relief but it also served to overwhelm his already raw senses.

It was easy to loosen the knot of Castiel’s tie without touching the other man’s skin. Dean slipped it over his head and then went for the cuffs at his wrists, flicking the buttons open. Castiel’s wrists were deceptively small and pale and Dean caught himself staring at the elegant line of his hands, remembering the way they’d felt before.

The tension between them was so strong it stuck to Dean’s tongue on every inhale. Castiel didn’t move except to follow Dean’s hands as they came up to slip the first of his shirt’s buttons through its hole, but Dean felt like they were locked together somehow. It was confusing; the tightness of his chest and the quickness of his heartbeat should’ve been due to disgust or loathing or fear. Instead there was arousal in the dryness of Dean’s mouth and the occasional jump of his muscles.

The first time Dean had ever seen Castiel he’d been hit with an unfamiliar desire. Dean had been familiar with lust and sex and he’d been getting off with other people since he was a teenager. There was nothing new about looking at someone and thinking they’d be fun to take to bed. Cas had been different and Dean never had been able to put his finger on why. It hadn’t mattered because the time they’d spent together hadn’t amounted to much more than an empty bed and no goodbye. 

That feeling was back, though. It wasn’t just that Dean was attracted to Castiel, it was that he _wanted_ him. All of him. Maybe not the guy he was here on the Estate, the slave master and the beloved child of a cruel and disconnected family, but the guy he’d been. The one Dean was still stupid enough to think might not have been a complete lie.

The one some traitorous part of him was looking for as he revealed Castiel’s flesh inch by smooth, flushed inch.

Dean didn’t slip until he went to tug the tails of the shirt from Castiel’s waistband and his knuckles brushed over hot skin. The lean muscles of Castiel’s abs fluttered under the accidental touch and Dean sucked in a breath. He waited for punishment or admonishment or an order but nothing came until he’d freed that last button and left the shirt to hang loose around Castiel’s body.

“On your knees,” Castiel said.

A chill swept over Dean’s body and he swallowed hard. This wasn’t a position Dean had ever been comfortable with. Before being sold to the Adler Estate he’d mostly associated it with being used or a means to an end. Being a slave had only made that worse.

He folded to his knees without question, though, determined to prove that he didn’t need much training. If he could get through this, if he could rock Castiel’s sheltered little world, then maybe he’d be with Michael soon. It wasn’t something for Dean to look forward to, but being close to Michael meant being closer to Sam. 

Dean lifted his hands to the fastenings of Castiel’s pants but a hand closed over his own to stop him.

“Shoes,” Castiel said.

The warmth of a flush crept up Dean’s neck as he dropped his hands and scooted back to give himself room to work. The laces of Castiel’s fancy shoes gave with a light tug and Dean slipped the right one off first, biting down on his lip when Castiel rested a hand on his shoulder for balance. The shoe was set aside and Dean hooked his fingers in the opening of Castiel’s sock so he could slide it off.

They shifted in tandem as Dean went to work on the next one, Castiel lowering his foot while Dean reached for the other. It was quiet as Dean loosened the laces and the slipped the shoe off. The second sock followed and then Castiel’s feet were bare.

Dean didn’t have a thing for feet in general, but he found himself thinking that Castiel’s weren’t that bad. In case the guy started making really weird demands that involved Dean’s mouth and his toes, Dean thought he could handle it without gagging. But Castiel didn’t make Dean do anything like that. A finger under his chin forced Dean to lift his face and for a long moment Castiel just stared down at him. 

It was entirely possible Dean was supposed to just know what to do here. A good slave probably would and that was what Michael was looking for. But Dean couldn’t bring himself to move. 

“Up,” Castiel commanded.

The rise to his feet was easier than Dean would’ve thought, his body responding quickly to the order he’d been waiting for. Castiel reached out a hand and brushed his fingers over the slope of one of Dean’s bare shoulders and then down his sternum in a slow, purposeful drag that ended at the waistband of his pants.

“You have no idea-”

Castiel cut himself off with a shake of his head and flattened his hand over Dean’s hip. A tight grip didn’t hold Dean still, but something about the possessive splay of fingers against his skin kept him where he was. 

“Do you understand your duties in the bedroom?” Castiel asked.

His voice was so low and thick with heat that it made Dean’s toes curl, gripping the carpet like it would be enough to keep him from losing his damn mind. 

“Yes, sir,” Dean said.

There’d been no practical lesson but Alistair had delighted in telling Dean in graphic detail what some of the expectations would be. The Adler sons, he’d said, had very _specific_ sexual appetites and a slave who didn’t fulfill their needs never lasted for long. It wasn’t something Dean had wanted to think about. His brother was one of those slaves, after all, and it was impossible to decide which fate would be worse. 

It was different with Castiel stepping in closer, his hand drawing Dean in until their hips were flush. 

“Anything Michael wants, anything _I_ want, you give without question,” Castiel said.

By now his voice was quiet enough that it could’ve been a sigh, something guttural and heavy with want. Dean licked his lips before he answered, felt Castiel push in even closer.

“Yes, sir,” he said, just as soft.

Dean’s lips tingled with every puff of Castiel’s breath across the suddenly sensitive skin. The other man’s eyes kept darting down to his mouth and Dean wasn’t sure what the policy was in the Estate on kissing slaves, but he was almost positive that it was one of those frowned-upon practices.

Then again, maybe it was something they allowed here because the Adlers were into it. Or maybe Castiel was remembering that first kiss, soaked in the fragrant taste and airy burn of alcohol, punctuated with slips of tongue and hints of teeth. One kiss and Dean had been hard. Two of them had Castiel whimpering into Dean’s mouth like _he_ was the one who’d spent his life being paid to do it.

The memory burned just under Dean’s skin and made his mouth wet with anticipation. He _wanted_ it even though Castiel was a liar and a slave trader, even though this man here had turned his back on the people of the colonies and saw nothing wrong with that. 

Dean was a slave here and had no rights to his own body. The freedom to say no had been stripped from him. Somewhere his brother had probably gone through this same exercise, maybe with this same man, and _still_ Dean could feel arousal awakening every nerve ending in a more pleasant way than the collar could. 

Castiel leaned in; the tip of his nose dragged across Dean’s and everything seemed to stop. Dean’s entire body bowed inward, his neck craned down, his lips pursed, everything in it quivering like a bitch in heat. Shame flooded Dean’s veins. There was something wrong with him, something down to his fucking _marrow_. His father would kill him if he knew. Dean wouldn’t be able to blame him.

It happened before Dean could process it, some old instinct kicking in at the thought of what a disgusting whore, what a fucking failure, he was. Without his permission, Dean’s arms flew up and his hands shoved Castiel so hard the other man fell back.

“Get the fuck _away_ from me!” Dean yelled.

The words were barely out of his mouth when the collar reacted, the buzz almost soft at first but increasing in intensity until Dean felt like he’d been submerged in water and struck by lightning. Everything hurt from the inside out. It felt like his bones were melting, his blood boiling, his brain flying apart into a million pieces. Dean couldn’t even scream because his body locked up tight and his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.

Somewhere between the agony and the humiliation Dean was aware of a voice yelling for him. His body hit the floor seconds later. A few minutes after that his entire body shut down and everything went black.

_._

 

This wasn’t Dean’s first brush with death so he recognized the signs. There were moments, brief though they were, where he managed to surface into a world that was nothing but pain and darkness and fear. When it happened he could hear voices around him, always familiar even if their words were just a river of sound that drifted through Dean’s ears and settled at the base of his spine, collected there with the hurt to remind him he was still alive.

The pain receded after a while. The numbness was worse.

Dean drifted, his mind free but empty of all thought. When he was aware of anything at all, he could only see a handful of faces. Most of them were family – Sam’s wide eyes, Dad’s strong hands, Mom’s lovely smile. Bobby turned up to tell him he still had a job to do. Ellen was there to squeeze the back of his neck and laugh about how it was only a flesh wound and since when had anything like that been able to stop a Winchester?

None of it was real and so when Castiel turned up as a disembodied voice, Dean had no reason to think it was any different. Fucked up, yeah, but he’d come to accept the fact that there were a few important wires crossed in his brain.

“Lucifer wants you to be put down,” he said the first time, “and Michael doesn’t think you’re worth the trouble of keeping. They told me you’re too unpredictable and stubborn to be a proper slave. They’re not wrong, are they?”

There was a fondness in Castiel’s voice and Dean thought maybe they weren’t meant as a way of pointing out Dean’s failure. Maybe they were supposed to be the exact opposite.

“Everyone thinks I get off on the challenge of training you,” Castiel said the next time. “I guess if it means I get to keep you here it doesn’t matter what they think.”

On and on it went. As Dean struggled to determine reality from whatever strange fantasy world his mind was determined to live in, he learned a lot of things about the man he was supposed to think of as master. Michael and Lucifer were absolute dicks and they didn’t think much of Castiel. Neither did his father. It was pure luck and familial indulgence that meant Castiel had been allowed to keep Dean. That and the fact that apparently no one thought he was ever going to wake up.

Castiel loved to read and he did that out loud sometimes. Dean never could remember the details of the stories, but for a while it was enough to paint the bland landscapes of his dreams in vivid color. For what felt like hours and hours, Castiel would be there. His voice became as common a fixture as Sam’s face, its rough texture and deep quality growing more and more familiar. For a while Dean didn’t know how to feel about it, still angry at himself and at the man who owned him, still ashamed and afraid of everything inside of him that had given birth to that shame.

Like he could sense it, Castiel told Dean _everything_ in hushed whispers that almost got lost in the cavernous space of Dean’s mind. They weren’t happy stories – it was all neglect and cruelty at the hands of his family. Lucifer, he said, had been taught to take out his anger on slaves when he was a child so that Castiel and Anna could be spared. Castiel had never been allowed to keep a slave because his family thought he wasn’t worth the honor. Secretly, Castiel admitted, he was glad of it. 

The man who came to Dean as he died wasn’t just a training master and son of the Adler Estate; this man was _Cas_. He confessed that he hated his family, that he loathed the Estates. These were things that Dean had already known but he’d never heard Cas say them _here_. It had to be dangerous and yet he didn’t stop. Some days it was like everything came flooding out of him because he simply couldn’t stop it.

Dean soaked it all up and waited for an answer to the pressing questions – why Castiel had been in the colony, why he’d lied, why he’d come back here. They never came but Dean knew that would have been too much to ask of his swan song imaginings.

“I’ve thought of you,” Castiel said on the very last day. “Every day since we first met. I went back. It was too late but . . .”

He trailed off and for the first time since the numbness had settled into Dean’s body and rendered it nothing more than a shell, sensation flooded his senses. It was a hand in his hair, the fingers gentle along the curve of Dean’s skull. The feel of it was dampened but it warmed Dean from the top of Dean’s head down through his arms and legs, resting bright and perfect in the tips of his fingers and toes.

“I know why you’re here. I’m going to help you but you have to wake up.”

And then the touch and the voice were gone, leaving Dean cold in the wake of something he couldn’t be sure was a dream anymore. The dark threatened to close in again but Dean fought it off, clinging to memories of his brother’s laugh and his parents’ faith and that imagined promise.

The next morning, Dean opened his eyes.

_._

 

The first breath Dean took when he woke up rasped in his throat and sent him into a coughing fit that tightened his chest until he thought his ribs had somehow gotten tangled up with each other.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a familiar voice murmured. “Slow down. You just woke up. I’m pretty sure Castiel will kill me if I let you die on us.”

Pamela’s hands helped Dean into a sitting position and he accepted the glass of water she handed to him with shaking hands. Somehow he managed a small sip without spilling all over himself and it was enough to ease the harsh rasp in his throat. 

“You’re lucky,” Pamela said. “No slave I’ve known has survived doing what you did. If the collar doesn’t fry ‘em, the Adlers have someone else take care of it.”

Dean took another sip, a bit larger this time, and then set the glass on the side table. A quick glance around revealed they were in Castiel’s bedroom. Natural light danced in through the window to illuminate the space and Dean blinked out at the sprawling view of the Estate. 

“How long?” he asked.

“Almost a week. Meg said you wouldn’t wake up. I was starting to believe her.”

That was a long time to have lost and Dean winced, thinking back to the last thing he could remember. Castiel had been close enough to kiss, Dean had shoved him away, and the collar . . . .

Dean’s hand flew up to his neck but the thick weight of his training collar was absent. Instead there was a cord around his neck, the metal softer than anything he’d felt before. It had to be precious, platinum maybe, and there was a lock at the back – old-fashioned but, Dean realized after feeling it out, impossible to pick.

“What happened? My collar-”

Pamela shrugged and got to her feet. “They gave you to Castiel,” she said. “They thought it would be funny if you died since he likes you so much. But look at you, throwing a wrench into their plans.”

A smile curved her lips and she turned for the door.

“They won’t be happy when they find out you’re awake, so whatever you two are gonna do you’d better make it fast.”

She was gone before Dean could ask what she was talking about, the door closing behind her with a soft click. Dean stared at it for a long time, fingertips moving over the new band of metal around his throat while he thought.

Slaves who made it through training were given new collars, something chosen specifically by their new master or assigned by the Estate family. Unlike the training collars, it was assumed that any slave who had been handed over to his or her official master didn’t need constant monitoring and punishment. The new collars were fixed with identification, a tracking device, and an unbreakable lock but that was it. 

Dean scoffed. It was impossible to escape captivity with a training collar because it would lay you out flat before you even made it two steps, but this one wasn’t much better. There were check-in points all around the Estate that scanned slave collars to make sure they had been given access to wherever it was they were trying to go. No slave had access to the colonies and so even if Dean could grab Sam and they both miraculously passed through every checkpoint without notice, they’d never make it out. Not without some kind of alternate passage, anyway.

The Adler Estate was connected to the Liberty Movement somehow, but not even Dad had been able to figure out who was in charge of funneling slaves off the Estate. No one in the colonies had been able to help in the months it had taken for them to set this whole thing up. The plan had been for Dean to find out once he was through with his training, but if he’d attracted as much attention as Pamela implied . . . there was no way around it. He was fucked.

Dean was still absorbed in figuring out a plan when the door opened again and Castiel stepped inside. Everything inside of Dean locked up and he fought the urge to pull his knees up to his chest and make himself as small as possible.

Pamela had said Castiel liked him but Dean was pretty sure he’d been a favorite of Alistair’s, too. That didn’t mean anything. And while Dean clung to the rapidly fading memory of the Cas who’d visited his dreams he knew that wasn’t the real deal. That was just the feverish projection of a dude Dean had met once, sent to keep him company while his body decided if it was going to live or die.

Some instinct told Dean he could trust Castiel but he rebelled against it. As screwed up in the head as he was, he couldn’t even trust himself when it came to the other man. He told himself to err on the side of caution but even he didn’t think there was any mistaking the look on Castiel’s face for anything other than relief.

“I hear I belong to you, now,” Dean said, forcing his voice steady.

Castiel’s face fell but he didn’t bother building up the walls that he’d hidden behind during their other encounters. Instead he dropped his head and rubbed at the back of his neck, such an undignified gesture and one that Dean had done himself enough times to recognize discomfort when he saw it.

“It was the only way they would spare your life,” he said, the words directed to the floor

“They thought I was going to die.”

Castiel looked up at that and met Dean’s gaze. “I knew you wouldn’t,” he said.

Dean bit the inside of his cheek and looked away. “So what now? You keep me chained up next to your bed? Let me outside when I’ve been a good little slave?”

Castiel sighed, a gusty and angry sound, and strode forward. Dean hated himself for wincing when the other man’s hand rose, especially when it was just so that Castiel could throw two tiny disks onto his lap. 

“Those are your records,” Castiel said. “Your _real_ records. My brothers got curious and asked me to do some digging.”

Dean stared down at the small circlets, their shiny faces catching the sunlight and giving it back in prisms of color. There was no erasing data in this day and age. No matter how far underground Dean had gone, he’d always known that there was proof of his identity out there somewhere. Luckily the Winchesters knew some people who could bury it so far up the Governing Body’s ass that it would take months to find. And yet Castiel was saying he’d tracked it down in seven days.

“You’re bluffing,” Dean said, lifting his chin and flicking the disks toward the foot of the bed.

Castiel narrowed his eyes. “You submitted falsified records to the Estate. They think your name is Dean Smith, that your father John is your only living family. I thought maybe you’d lied to me before but you didn’t, did you?” Dean sucked in a breath and felt his insides ice over when Castiel continued. “Your name is Dean Winchester and you’re here for your brother.”

There was no way the last part was in the file. The Winchesters had fallen off the grid a long time ago. When they showed up these days it was as a blip on the radar that was gone again before anyone could bother paying attention. Dean and John had been living as the Smiths for almost a year, building up a presence in the outlying colony that would be supported by the records Ash fabricated for them. The last official note that would’ve been made about the Winchesters would have been Dean and John’s violent death following the sale of Sam to the Adler Estate.

Figuring out why Dean was really there didn’t require much of a stretch, but he wasn’t going to give Castiel the satisfaction of seeing him squirm.

“You think you’re pretty smart, huh?” he said.

“I know I am,” Castiel retorted. 

He stepped up to the edge of the bed, close enough that Dean could feel his body heat. It prickled all along the bare skin of Dean’s arms.

“You told me your real name,” Castiel said, peering down at Dean like he was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “The first time we met.”

“I was drunk,” Dean countered.

That was a lie and they both knew it. When Castiel had walked up to Dean’s table they’d both only been two cheap, weak beers into the night. For some stupid reason, despite his relative sobriety, Dean had spilled more about himself to the man with the bright blue eyes than was wise. He’d never thought to regret it until they’d crossed paths again. Now he was kicking himself for being such an idiot.

“You weren’t,” Castiel said.

They stared at each other, Castiel’s eyes calm and as inhumanly pretty as they’d ever been. Dean had to wonder if that was natural or if someone had played around with the guy’s genetics. 

“What do you want from me?” Dean asked.

Castiel didn’t say a word as he knelt on the bed and leaned into Dean’s body, the heat of him overwhelming from so close. 

“They know I’ve found your file. Yours and your brother’s,” he said. “I can’t hide them forever.”

Dean’s eyes slammed shut when Castiel’s hands found his throat, thumbs running across the smooth cord of metal. A shift and they were pressed flush, the soft material of Castiel’s shirt dragging across Dean’s skin. 

“I’m handing the information over tomorrow,” Castiel told him, the words whispered less than an inch from his ear. “You need to be gone by then.”

“And you want me to walk out the front door?” Dean asked. “Good plan.”

Castiel sighed, the gust of breath washing over Dean’s neck and raising goosebumps. “Why do you have to be so stubborn?”

Dean finally gathered his wits enough to push at Castiel’s shoulders. The movement put some space between them but not much.

“Why do you have to be such a fucking-”

Castiel’s hand came down on Dean’s mouth, muffling the rest of what he’d been about to say. 

“Eight more hours,” Castiel said, his voice so soft Dean practically had to read his lips. “Play along for eight more hours and I promise I’ll get you out of here.”

“Not without Sammy,” Dean said. 

The words were muffled into Castiel’s palm but he nodded to indicate he’d heard.

“Trust me,” he said.

Dean stared at him and was shocked to realize he wanted to. Maybe he was just that desperate, but he wanted to believe that Castiel was gonna help him save Sammy. At this point he almost literally had no choice. He gave a short nod and Castiel removed his hand.

“Man, you really get off on this, don’t you?” Dean muttered.

They were still pressed so close together that Dean could feel Castiel’s heartbeat in his own chest, even through the thin cloth of the other man’s shirt. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to get a rise out of Castiel or remind him that playing along didn’t mean Dean had to be docile. Either way, Castiel just stared at him with his head tipped to the side like a curious bird and then he raised an eyebrow.

“And you don’t?”

The words weren’t accusatory; there was a matter-of-factness to them that left Dean split wide-open. He could lie, the option was obviously there, but the denial got lost somewhere in his throat. Instead he made a jagged sound that was half-sigh, half-growl and complete resignation. 

Castiel’s face softened and his hands moved to his own lap.

“I feel like I’ve spent the last four years wanting you,” he said. “But not like this. I swear.”

And Dean, damn him, believed it. He thought of the flashes of reluctance he’d seen on the other man’s face, a guilt quickly hidden until it was like Dean was just seeing things, some reflection of himself where he was desperate not to be alone.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “I’m not really known for an ability to control my impulses.”

The words were as full of innuendo as Dean could manage – and considering how much of an art he’d made of the double-entendre, they fell like a blatant invitation between the two of them. He waited for Castiel to react, to grab him and take what they’d been denying themselves since their first night together. Instead Castiel just stared at him, his body uncomfortably tight. It was like he was poised to run but frozen to the spot at the same time.

Dean understood the hesitation. This was, bar none, the worst thing he could possibly do right now. It was just impossible for him to care. After everything he’d been through, if tonight was his last night in this hell-hole then he was going to take something sweet back with him instead of memories of agony and embarrassment. It was something he was entitled to. He’d fucking _earned_ this.

“You can leave,” he said, “but if you stay then I’m gonna kiss you.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I _want_ to,” Dean said, meeting Castiel’s eyes with his own. “It’s your turn to trust me.”

Castiel sucked in a breath but some of the tension eked out of his body and he didn’t move except to lean just the tiniest bit closer. Dean grinned, thought of how much more open and uninhibited Castiel had been in the colonies. The thought was both bittersweet and amusing, just another example of how much different things were here on the Estate. 

It wasn’t enough to stop Dean from closing the gap between them. He eased himself forward, dragged the tip of his nose along the bridge of Castiel’s, a gentle nudge to get him to tilt his head. Castiel moved the way he was quietly guided, eyes heavy-lidded and fixed on Dean. It should’ve been unsettling but it just made Dean’s blood run hotter.

Slowly, like he had all the time in the world, Dean brushed his lips over Castiel’s. It was more of a nuzzle than a kiss and Dean repeated the action over – his bottom lip catching against the seam of Castiel’s mouth – and over – upper lip pillowed against the swell of the lower – until he could feel Castiel’s breath coming in hot, damp pants. 

Dean smirked and did it again, adding a flick of his tongue this time. A groan tore out of Castiel’s throat and he surged forward, bringing their mouths together in a kiss that was deep and wet and brutal and so fucking hot Dean was dizzy from how hard it made him. They shifted, Dean leaning back against the headboard while Castiel straddled his hips. The weight of him was wonderfully familiar even though Dean had only felt it that one night. Something about Castiel like this, his hands gripping bruises into Dean’s shoulders while he shifted restlessly in search of friction, was right in all kinds of ways Dean didn’t want to think about.

He’d had plenty of sex in his life and he’d been with people who’d fit into his bed with the distinct shape of inevitability keeping them locked together. None of that had felt like this, like _fate_. Fuck, maybe Dean’s brains were just addled but he didn’t think so. He hadn’t felt this clear-headed in months.

The taste of Castiel was comforting on his tongue – mint and something else that was indefinably him. It occurred to Dean that, after being knocked out for a week, he probably didn’t exactly taste fresh but Castiel didn’t seem to care. He thrust his tongue into Dean’s mouth like he was trying to learn the shape of every inch from the inside out and it left Dean breathless.

Dean’s hands fell to Castiel’s hips, thumbs hooking in the waistband while he rocked their hips together. It took a few desperate thrusts before the hard line of Castiel’s cock rubbed up against Dean’s just right and they both fell out of the kiss with matching moans once they got it figured out.

“ _God_ ,” Castiel breathed, and Dean could only grunt in reply.

They rocked together, finding a rhythm that sent sparks shooting down Dean’s spine until he thought he might come like this – from a few kisses and a little rutting.

“What do you want?” Dean asked, dragging his lips away from Castiel’s and mouthing at the elegant line of his neck. 

“No,” Castiel said, but the word was a stuttered gasp that Dean almost didn’t catch. “No,” he said again.

The word had roughly the same effect as a bucket of ice water and Dean pulled back, moving his hands from Castiel’s ass to the more neutral territory of his waist.

“No like “get the fuck off of me right now” or no like . . . .” 

Castiel smiled then, a small thing that reminded Dean so much of the old Cas that his heart jumped right out of his chest and lodged itself in those crooked corners. 

“You’re not on top of me,” he pointed out. 

“So?” Dean asked.

“So I don’t want to think about the parts we’re supposed to be playing right now.”

“Little hard to do that, dontcha think?” Dean asked, tilting his head so that the collar caught the light.

Castiel frowned and lifted one hand, ran his fingers over it again. Dean hated the look on his face and the shift in the air. If they were doing this, and apparently they definitely were, Dean didn’t want it to turn into some emotional mind-fuck that left them both feeling dirty after. Collar or not, for however long they were here neither of them belonged to anybody. 

What Castiel needed was a reminder. It took more effort than Dean expected to flip them so that he was lying on top of Castiel.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Castiel said.

Dean rolled his eyes. “You say that like I’ve never almost died and fucked someone just to feel alive again after.”

Castiel glared up at him briefly, yanked Dean down, and kissed him like he could erase the memory of those other lovers with the cleverness of his tongue alone. It worked. 

Dean’s hands drifted from Castiel’s hair to the buttons of his shirt but he didn’t bother being delicate about slipping them loose. Instead he yanked until the shirt split down the middle and fell back onto the bedspread, a splash of white against rich burgundy. Castiel nipped Dean’s bottom lip in response but somehow Dean didn’t think it was in protest. 

They were both fully hard again, Dean nestled between Castiel’s thighs in a way that allowed him to grind their hips together in the closest imitation to sex he could manage. Castiel’s head tipped back, his throat working with the force of the needy sounds falling past his lips. The sight of him was beautiful and Dean was torn between staring and tasting. In the end he couldn’t help himself and he leaned forward, mouth open against Castiel’s collarbones. 

“ _Dean_.”

Castiel made Dean’s name sound like something dirty and sexy. Dean grinned in response and pulled back from the ring of bruises he’d been sucking into Castiel’s chest.

“Yeah?” he asked with a particularly spectacular roll of his hips.

When Castiel laughed, the sound was breathy, happy. It was unfair.

“You’re going to make me come in my pants aren’t you?” he asked, peeling his eyes open.

His eyes were brighter than Dean had ever seen them, the pupils blown wide and ringed in a bright blue.

“I was thinking about it,” Dean said distractedly.

Castiel’s hands fell to his hips and shoved the thin waistband of his pants down to his knees. The sudden contact of Dean’s cock with the fabric of Castiel’s pants made him hiss out a curse, too much sensation all at once on just the right side of painful.

“Go for it,” he said.

And Dean was tempted but there was something he wanted more. The fastenings of Castiel’s pants took forever to give under his ineffectual tugging and Dean didn’t get any help. He narrowed his eyes at Castiel and ruined the effect by snickering at the innocent expression on the other man’s face. Eventually Dean got them open and without waiting he tugged Castiel’s cock through the opening of his underwear. 

Castiel’s eyes fluttered closed and his hands clenched on Dean’s hips. Dean grinned and took his hand away, waited for Castiel to try and pull him back, and then shifted and thrust their cocks together. The feel of skin sliding against skin had a starburst effect and Dean couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed because all he was aware of was how good it felt. Castiel was hard and thick against him, dripping precome until the slide was slick and _perfect_.

The hands that gripped him fell to Dean’s ass and pulled him in tighter, harder, faster. Dean didn’t listen to Castiel’s silent urging and fell into a rhythm of slow, grinding circles. Castiel moaned, arched his body closer, but Dean was patient.

He didn’t make Castiel beg but he saw that moment when it would’ve happened, when Castiel’s eyes flew open and he held Dean so hard it hurt. Dean leaned in then, brought their mouths together in a kiss that was sloppy, all tongues shoving and licking while Castiel moaned into the kiss, a steady litany of vowel sounds that made Dean’s dick harden impossibly against Castiel’s. With a groan of his own, Dean finally started to move like he wanted, like his body was demanding. Their cocks rubbed together with increasing friction, the grind of their hips picking up speed. 

Castiel’s body stretched so tight Dean thought it might snap and he recognized the signs of how close the other man was. It took all the willpower Dean had to break the kiss but he had to see this. There was no way he wasn’t going to imprint this moment onto his memory.

“Come on,” Dean muttered, snapping the threads of spit that still connected their tongues. “I wanna see. Come for me, Cas.”

With a loud cry, Castiel snapped his hips up and came. Dean wanted to look down, to watch Castiel’s cock as it spurted strings of come across Dean’s stomach and thighs and his own dick, but he couldn’t look away from the expression on Castiel’s face. It was unguarded and _full_ of too much – relief and joy and the remnants of desperation. Nowhere was there guilt or regret or the man who’d ordered Dean to undress him because his brothers had wanted him to.

This was _Cas_ , the kid from the colonies who saw past Dean’s bullshit in an instant and liked him all the more for the guy behind it all. This was the Cas who hated slavery and the Estates, who’d railed against the Governing Body. This was the person Dean had let into his heart and his body and his home without a second thought and all he wanted was to cling to this Cas and never let him disappear again.

Dean leaned back and gripped his own cock, close but still hovering on the edge. Despite coming hard enough that Dean was sure his ears had to be ringing, Castiel blinked his eyes open and ran his gaze down the length of Dean’s body. Being watched wasn’t really Dean’s thing but he thought maybe that would be enough. He could feel his orgasm pooling in his belly, drawing his balls up tight, and he was so fucking close . . .

“Like this,” Castiel said, voice low and gravel-rough.

And then he reached out, tangled his fingers with Dean’s around the length of his cock, and angled it so that there was no mistaking his meaning. Just the act of being given permission to mark Castiel up, the thought of doing so in a way that felt more important than any shitty piece of metal, was enough. Dean made a sound almost like dying as he came, painting Castiel’s belly and chest in ropes of white. Castiel reached down with his free hand and rubbed some of it into his skin.

Dean’s cock gave one last twitch at the sight. 

“Fuck, Cas,” he muttered.

His only answer was a smile that was a little shy and a lot wicked. Dean retaliated by taking Castiel’s hand and sucking one messy finger into his mouth. The way Cas’ eyes darkened was gratifying, but when his lips parted and his tongue peeked out like he wanted a taste himself Dean wasn’t feeling nearly as smug.

“How long have we got?” Dean asked.

The reminder of their situation brought them both up short but Castiel recovered quickly.

“We can spare one more hour,” he said.

“Good,” Dean said.

Then he leaned down to share the taste of himself the best way he knew how: licking deep into Castiel’s mouth until it was easy to pretend this wasn’t the last time they’d have this chance.

 

Two Years Later

The average traveler would take somewhere around two months to get from one of the central mountain Estates to the southernmost tip of the East Coast. Between the scarcity of fuel through the Midwest and the dangers of traveling certain roads, the journey had to be taken carefully and that sometimes meant an extended trip.

Luckily the Winchesters were nowhere near average, though whether they skewed above or below varied from opinion to opinion. They were in charge of a party of about twenty folks and they couldn’t all move fast – it was difficult to get large vehicles through sporadic government checkpoints which meant over half their party had to hoof it on foot underground for several miles at a time.

Sam and Dean led the way across the country on two motorcycles that Dean complained about the entire time. They weren’t his car – she was waiting in an old salvage yard a few miles from their destination – and he hated the need for a helmet on hot and increasingly muggy summer days. They couldn’t have traveled half as fast in the Impala, though, so he sucked it up and tore a path through the South for his dad and the rest of their party to follow.

Despite all of the necessary precautions that came with travelling cross-country with a bunch of escaped slaves, they still made it to the sizeable Key West colony in less time than it would take the general population. 

Key West was one of those places that had somehow escaped the Governing Body’s radar. Part of that would be its remoteness. Outside of being so far south residents laughed about being able to see Cuba on a clear night, a lot of the roads in this region were in bad shape. The Estates were clustered together further up the coastal line, easily accessible by only a handful of maintained roads. Everything else had either gone the way of most urban cities or was being slowly swallowed up by the surrounding bayous, everglades, and thick forests. 

The other part of it was that the only road in or out was maintained by the Shurley Estate. It was impossible to know exactly what kind of sway they had with the government but at some point the man in charge of the Estate had demanded privacy for himself and the colonies in his care and he’d gotten it. Shurley was something of a legend in their colony for a lot of reasons, that being just one of them.

There was always a fear while crossing the bridge that someone would’ve set up a checkpoint in their absence, but Ash would’ve sent word if that was the case and there were places to safely unload their slaves before they reached that last stretch of road. 

It was normal when Dean and Sam sped across – the same quiet length of asphalt as ever. The scent of ocean water was thick in the air, the sight of the Atlantic still as shiny and beautiful as it had been the first time Dean had laid eyes on it. It was another two hours to home but he and Sam sped all the way there and cut that time almost in half. By the time they roared through the tiny streets of their colony, Dean felt prickly and restless with adrenaline.

They pulled up in front of a non-descript building and Dean was already grinning by the time a familiar figure pushed open the doors and beamed at them.

“You’re early,” Sarah said. “They told me it’d be another day or so.”

Dean shrugged and yanked off his helmet. “Maybe the way my dad drives,” he said. “Jo almost hitched a ride on the back just ‘cause she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Sarah smiled at him, a little indulgently Dean thought, and then shifted her gaze to Sam. She was a new addition to their clan, a slave from an Estate a thousand miles or so up the coast. They hadn’t been the ones to extract her – that had been Cassie, Risa, and Jake’s team – but she’d imprinted on Sam like a duckling anyway. Dean thought it was cute. Sam kept pretending he didn’t notice, but he spent more time with Sarah than anyone else who wasn’t family. It was good for him. He didn’t smile nearly enough these days but he lit up whenever she was around.

“Hey, Sam,” Sarah said as soon as Sam got his helmet off.

He looked goofy with his long hair plastered to his head, wet with sweat, grinning at her like she was exactly who he’d been hoping to see. Dean rolled his eyes, hooked his helmet on the handlebars, and decided to leave them to it.

It was cool inside of the bar and Dean gleefully sucked in a lungful of oxygen that didn’t stick to his throat and make him think longingly of thin mountain air. Like most colony bars, The Cantina was nothing fancy. The interior was clean and dimly lit, the tabletops pitted and scarred, a few of the chairs wobbly enough to make a shitfaced customer dizzy. Unlike the others, though, this place also had Ellen’s familiar face smiling at him and handing him a cold beer as soon as he sat down at the bar.

“Welcome back. Your dad pulling up the rear again?” she asked.

Dean nodded. “I think Jo convinced him to step on it once they hit the bridge, though.”

Ellen snorted. “You guys run into any trouble out there?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” he said. “She did good, don’t worry.”

Ellen fixed Dean with an unimpressed stare. “Let’s see how you act if Sam gets sent on a separate mission,” she said.

Dean had to tip his bottle to her at that. “Touché.”

Ellen shook her head at him and caught sight of something over his shoulder.

“Let me know if you need anything,” she said, amusement coloring her tone warm.

Before Dean could ask what she was talking about, a body sidled up next to his at the bar, close enough that Dean started to feel hot all over for a reason unrelated to the weather.

“You’re back early.”

Dean laughed. “How are you all still surprised?”

Cas made a speculative sound and said, “Maybe we have low expectations.”

“That’s probably it,” Dean said, still grinning. “What about you? I thought you weren’t coming back this way for a few more months.”

“I was invited to the Shurley Estate,” he replied, calm as anything.

Dean turned to boggle at him. No one had ever even _seen_ Shurley before and the Estate was populated by only a few families who spent enough time in the colonies that it was easy to forget, sometimes, they weren’t all on equal footing. Shurley ran things differently around here and he was reclusive to say the least. Dean usually just thought of him as a hermit who may or may not have been eaten by his menagerie of exotic animals at some point in the last several years.

“Why?” Dean asked, too shocked to do more than make a face when Castiel stole a swig of beer.

“Not sure. He mentioned a business venture.”

“Huh,” Dean muttered, stealing his beer back. “So when’s this meeting?”

Castiel’s lips quirked up into a smile. “Next week.”

The length of Cas’ body pressed up against Dean’s for a brief moment. It was enough to remind him that it had been a few months since they’d crossed paths, Dean doing recon for this last mission, Cas finishing up a job of his own, and that was way too long. He drained the rest of his beer and pushed off of his stool.

“Come on, then,” Dean said. “You can double-check I made it back in one piece.”

Castiel snorted and followed Dean out into the hot, sticky air outside, their hands brushing with every step like something secret and safe.

**Author's Note:**

> The dub-con is between Dean and Castiel. The nature of their current relationship is that of a slave (Dean) and his master (Cas) and involves the power dynamics that come with it. A previous, equality-based relationship between them complicates things and Dean's attraction toward Cas is entirely based on that experience and is NOT a product of his current situation. There is one scene of explicit dub-con in a sexual scenario (though there's no actual sex) and even though I've attempted to make the sex scene as blatantly consensual as possible, they are still in the role of slave/master and don't take the time to properly negotiate around that so it could potentially read as problematic.


End file.
